the fisher queen

ELSIE FISHER on anxiety, The Addams Family and her addiction to social media…

Was your own eighth grade experience comparable to your character Kayla’s?

Yeah, absolutely. Especially at the beginning of filming. I really felt like we were the same person. Less so now, although I still heavily relate to her. I wasn’t really bullied, but more lonely. I had experiences with #MeToo, and I had anxiety.

You’ve written about your experience with anxiety. did making Eighth Grade help you process that? Yeah, I think so. I knew I had anxiety before the film, but I didn’t really know to what extent. And I didn’t know that anybody was feeling it as much as me. Talking to everyone on set, I realised it’s not just me. It’s not even just me and Bo. Everyone on set found this kinship, like, “We’re making this film about how we all feel.” I thought that was just incredible. That was just the best thing for me to experience and hear as a young mentally ill teenager.

How has the internet and social media impacted on your own life?

People with social media are heavily, heavily affected by social media, especially when we’re growing up. Personally, it’s become quite an addiction because every single piece of knowledge known to human kind is in your hand. So it’s definitely very impactful.

Kayla is impatient around her father, but clearly cares about him. How did you and Josh Hamilton bond? We didn’t have a lot of time on set, so me and him and my actual father walked around New York City and got ice cream. He gives me a lot of dad vibes. He has actual children in real life, but if you didn’t know that and just saw him walking down the street, you’d be like, “That’s a dad.” That made it very easy to feel like he’s my father.

Where did “Gucci”, Kayla’s YouTube sign-off, come from?

“Gucci!” was my thing! It was a little nervous tic I had in pre-production. I would just say it instead of “OK” or “cool”. They’d be like, “Hey, Elsie, do you want to go get coffee or something?” I’d be like, “Gucci!” It became an inside joke on set after that. We filmed the videos last, so Bo said, “We’ve got to put in ‘Gucci!’”

What’s next?

First I’m going back to school! But I have a few projects I’m trying to get made. And I’m doing a voice in an animated version of The Addams Family. I’m very excited for that.